Research in the Pannonian Danubian fort Ala Nova/Schwechat

Roman forts and cemeteries located along the Danube Limes in Pannonia have rarely been the focus of archaeological research. Although the fortifications around the Roman fort Ala Nova in today`s Schwechat (AT) were known, no building in the fort itself had been investigated so far. The cemetery in the site Frauenfeld was also known only through coincidental finds. Therefore, it was a piece of luck for archaeology that in 2009/2010 large areas of two buildings in the fort as well as a large contiguous area of the cemetery with about 140 graves south of the fort could be excavated. These excavations were carried out by the excavation company Archäologie Service on behalf of the Federal Monuments Office. The scientific analysis was part of a dissertation at the University of Vienna. A central result of the thesis was the definition of five phases of construction and use in the fort (area). The phases were defined with the help of the relative chronological sequence of the features and the analysis of the find material and they span the period from the 1st half of the 3rd to the end of the 4th or early 5th century A.D. The cemetery on the site of Frauenfeld also dates to the 3rd century A.D. Cremation and inhumation burials were found in equal proportions in the cemetery, as the cemetery had been in use during the period when cremation burials were slowly being abandoned in favor of inhumations. The focus of the analysis of the graveyard was the elaboration of the way in which the dead were buried and with which objects their graves were furnished. For this purpose, the graves and the objects included in them were analyzed.